Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] Wait a Minute--Oils vs. INXS

ALEXEI alexeis@usa.net
Fri, 29 Mar 2002 21:41:32 +0200


Easy, everyone, easy, cool your jets, stop pouring derision where it doesn't
belong.  Wherever you may believe the truth lies,  Farriss voiced the facts:
MO never had or never worked to have the kind and amount of success INXS had
internationally.  It doesn't diminish the Oils' value any little bit, nor
should it offend to the extent one should start calling other groups 'crappy'.
 Unless the critics get to read the Oils' minds or secret diaries, no-one on
the list will convince me that the Oils have never pondered trying a
lighter/sweeter coat on at some point in time to be able to reach a wider
audience lyrically/politically (just a thought, to think is human....  Who
knows, maybe they cry at night at their inability to feel like Hutchence did
:-))

It is a blasphemy and a grave injustice to performers to think that they can
go on for years writing stuff they don't like themselves, only to be
commercially successful, or be liked by frenzied adolescent chicks etc. etc. 
It is a fundamentally wrong thing to believe and say that if a musician writes
his songs this way and not the other, he's not worth anything.  INXS were a
band with its own vision and ideas and its own sense of direction.  Talented
musicians, too.  They placed Australia back on the musical map of the world...
ok, one part of the musical map that is called dream wave/pop
rock/commercial... I leave it to you to choose the ratio.  As a matter of
fact, I've encountered problems trying to explain MO to people using concepts
like "honesty, sincerity, consistency" etc.  "Hey," they would point out to
me, "what is it then that differs Midnight Oil from Rose Tattoo, for instance,
or hundreds and thousands of other bands, unwilling to compromise their ideals
for commercial success?"  And that's very true, you know.  To me, Midnight Oil
is about music in the first place, and they are the songwriters I like best in
this world, but that doesn't mean I stop seeing music (and art across the
board) as a very individual, person-to-person communication format.  That
said, the argument along the line of "this is good and that is crappy" will
never get you anywhere.

FYI: the only INXS record I have is Greatest Hits, and it is kinda sufficient
for me.  But God save us all from the monochromatic world of all music being
as good as Midnight Oil's.

Alexei